


for you, there's nothing in this world i wouldn't do

by imadetheline



Series: learning, little by little [9]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Banter, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Jedi Training (Star Wars), No Incest, Sibling Bonding, Sibling Rivalry, Sparring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 04:08:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30116919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imadetheline/pseuds/imadetheline
Summary: Luke and Leia take some time to spar and discuss their next move.
Relationships: Leia Organa & Luke Skywalker
Series: learning, little by little [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2100993
Kudos: 22





	for you, there's nothing in this world i wouldn't do

**Author's Note:**

> title from hey brother by avicii
> 
> more luke and leia banter? i think yes. and again it makes more sense if you've read the rest of the series.

“Well, if there’s one Jedi thing I can get behind, it’s laser swords,” Leia says, bouncing on the balls of her toes where she’s leaning against Luke’s doorframe, finishing one of her braids.

Luke rolls his eyes but doesn’t look up from the datapad where he’s scanning a supply report as he sits cross-legged on his bed. “It’s called a lightsaber, Leia.”

“Whatever.”

He does glance up at that, raising an eyebrow in his best impression of her, fingers hovering over the datapad as a smirk tugs at his lips, “The fact that you don’t know what it’s called doesn’t bode well for you actually getting one, you know.”

Leia rolls her eyes, finishing off her braid and then pulling pins from seemingly thin air to wrap it around her head and pin it up, “Oh shut it, Jedi-boy. Pretty sure when you got your first one, you didn’t even know what a city was.”

Luke scrunches his nose, giving up on trying to read the report and tossing the datapad aside where it thumps against his covers. “Hey, we had cities,” he pouts, glaring at where she’s now standing with her arms crossed, braids wrapped in a neat dark band around the crown of her head. She just grins and jerks her head in the direction of the door behind her. So Luke uncrosses his legs, still glaring half-heartedly, and pushes himself off the bed, straightening his tunic as he steps out the door after her.

Then a thought registers, and his scowl turns into a wide grin. Leia catches sight of it as she walks next to him, a head shorter but always a step in front of him with how fast she walks. “Does this mean I can call you Jedi-girl now?” he asks.

She doesn’t even turn, gaze fixed on the hall in front of her as they pass a group of pilots heading to the mess hall. “No, because I distinctly remember _someone_ saying” —she lowers her voice in an impression of him— “‘Using the Force doesn’t have to make you a Jedi.’” Then she does glance at him, smirking triumphantly.

“That is not what I sound like,” Luke sulks, side-stepping a mechanic in a dirty jumpsuit carrying a box of parts. Leia just fixes him with a look, eyebrows raised and Luke scowls, throwing up his hands. “Fine. I’ll just stick to ‘your highnessness’ then.”

She turns down a hall towards the training rooms, and he catches up just in time to see her roll her eyes, “That’s such an old nickname. C’mon, switch it up a little.”

Luke drags his feet, “Han isn’t here to come up with more, and you know I’m bad at nicknames.”

Leia snorts, “That’s true.”

“Hey!”

She stops at the training room door, pressing the controls, and just shrugs, “You said it, not me.” Luke shakes his head, staring at her back as she walks into the room without looking back. He can’t win.

So he just steps in after her and takes in the training hall. It’s not like the Alliance has access to state-of-the-art facilities, so it’s just a big room with some mats thrown down, some training droids, and a rack of blasters along one wall. And propped next to them are two long wooden sticks taken straight from the forest surrounding the base. They’re unconventional, but he’d needed to show Leia the basics, and neither of them has actual lightsabers. 

He’d felt slightly silly at first, waving around a stick, but Leia has the magical gift of making anything dangerous. So after a few painful hits to his stomach, he’d gotten over how he looked to save himself from ending up in the medbay. 

Leia strides right to them, sidestepping a woman and twi’lek sparring on the mats, and grabs one. Luke smiles and crosses the room too, as Leia takes up a ready stance near an empty side of the room, the stick held up in front of her.

Luke senses what she’s going to do a minute before she does it, and he’s already ducking under her swing that would have knocked him flat with a hit to the chest. He rolls across the mats, the sound of chatter and blaster fire in the background fading away as his focus narrows to Leia, smirking, and the weapon, or pretend one, in her hands. His fingertips brush across the other stick propped against the wall as he reaches out and snatches it, bringing it up just in time to catch Leia’s next swing. The clatter of wood echoes around them, but Luke just grins, “Couldn’t wait for me to get a weapon?”

Leia grins back, a wicked gleam in her eyes, “Now where’s the fun in that?” And Luke can’t help himself—he laughs, loud and light, even as he ducks and parries another of Leia’s swings. Growing up, he’d never quite _wished_ for a sister. But as he ducks and weaves around her, smiling and teasing back and forth, he’s viscerally aware that this— _this—_ is what he was missing. Her presence is like fire and the ground beneath his feet all at once, inspiring and steadying, and his other half—like some part of him hadn’t been whole until he’d discovered her: his _sister_. Thinking about it still makes him dizzy sometimes—that against all odds, he’s found his family again. After he thought he’d lost everything, he’d found them: Leia, and Han, all his friends… and his father.

He finally knocks the stick from Leia’s hand after a few harsh minutes with a twist of his own pretend saber, breathing heavily and smirking. He’s been showing her the basics of fighting with a blade recently when they both have time and are on the base together. But she hasn’t had as much training as him, and most of their sessions end this way—with him disarming her. Though everyday, they last longer, and Luke ends breathing heavier, muscles sore, and sweat pricking at his temple. But there’s hardly anything else he’d rather do. “Surrender?” he says, between breaths, bringing his stick up to hover between them, pointed at her neck.

She rolls her eyes and just pushes his saber away from her face, wiping at the sweat on her forehead with the back of her hand. “So dramatic.”

Luke chooses to ignore that comment, lowering the training blade and crossing the room to set it back against the wall. Leia calls her fallen saber to her hand with the Force and deposits it next to Luke’s, pushing a few stray hairs that have fallen out of her braids behind her ear. Luke smirks at her, stretching out his arms, and says, “You know, getting an actual lightsaber doesn’t mean you’ll be able to beat me.”

Her scoff echoes loudly in the now mostly empty training hall as she stretches, leaning down to touch the floor with a flexibility Luke envies. “We both know I don’t need a lightsaber to kick your ass, flyboy.”

Now it’s Luke’s turn to scoff, “And what is that supposed to mean exactly?”

She straightens up, her smile sharp, and Luke fights the urge to run far away from the gleam in her eye. “You know what it means.” She quirks her eyebrow, and that’s all the warning he gets before her fist is swinging towards his face. He backsteps to avoid it but feels her knuckles graze his nose anyway. She’s holding back, he can tell, but that hit still would have hurt if it had landed.

So he pulls his fists up too before she can take another free shot. And then they’re engaged in hand-to-hand combat. Granted, they’re both pulling punches, but Leia’s so small and agile that she keeps ducking around his throws like they’re dancing partners and nothing more. Luke’s used to being the smallest and fastest in a fight, so fighting Leia is always a mental adjustment. And one that brings a lot of frustration. He twists to pull her arm down, but she’s already on his other side, smirking, and Luke scowls, but it’s too late to stop her.

He ends up on his back on the mat, staring up at the grey ceiling and breathing heavily. Leia’s face pops into his field of vision, and she’s grinning from ear to ear, dark eyes warm and sparkling with mirth. “Told you,” she says, her triumph glowing over their bond.

The moment she swung, he knew he would end up losing; she’s better at hand-to-hand combat than he is. Luke blames the years of training she had as a princess in wrestling and boxing and martial arts while he was fixing vaporators in a desert. But they’ve had that argument many times before, so he doesn’t say anything—just glowers up at her. But it’s half-hearted as he fights back a smile of his own. Leia rolls her eyes and holds out a hand to help him up, pulling him to his feet with a strength that surprises many. Luke doesn’t even blink at it.

He likes to think he’s learned not to underestimate her anymore, but it’s hard to tell because Leia is by far the best person he’s ever met at picking up new skills. It always amazes him how fast she is at adapting and adjusting. Last month when he’d landed back on the base on a quick check-in from the Executor, they’d trained, and she’d beaten him with a move he’d never seen before. It turned out she’d come up with it and perfected it while he was away. So maybe he’s not above underestimating her, but he tries his best not to. Not least of all because he knows he’ll end up with some injury if he does.

Case in point, Leia seems to recognize the train of thought playing out over his face because she punches his arm none too lightly. “Don’t think too hard. You’ll hurt yourself.” But she’s smiling fondly, and Luke can’t bring himself to come up with a retort, just rubs at his arm where she’d hit him as he steps off the mats after her.

Leia pulls a comm out of one of the pockets in her white jumpsuit and glances at it. She has a meeting with Command he knows—she’d told him earlier before agreeing to a short training session—so he glances at a chrono on the wall and is surprised to find it’s in five minutes. Leia seems to realize it, too, as she slips the comm back into her pocket, the corners of her lips turning down. Luke knows she’s been dealing with a lot of command’s suspicions and reservations about a plan that Luke and Leia can’t even fully tell them. And he’s avoided most of their questions and anger by simply being on the Executor more often than not, and when he’s with the Rebellion, being off on missions. But Leia has to deal with them almost daily.

Luke reaches for her and squeezes her arm, but before he can speak, she beats him to it, switching topics completely, “When are we going to get Han? Her voice is quiet but steady, and Luke glances around the empty training hall—it’s dinner time in the mess hall; everyone’s probably gone for food. 

He doesn’t remove his hand from her shoulder, feeling her warmth radiate through her shirt and to the nerves in his prosthetic—proof of the life in her veins. And he’s certain she knows the answer to her own question. They’d discussed it when he’d commed two weeks ago from aboard the Executor. But he knows how hard it is to wait, so he just smiles sadly, “Lightsabers and then Han. They’ll help us get him out quicker at the very least.”

Her gaze flickers over him and then past him, towards the chrono looming ominously over them, time ticking away. “How long is it going to take us to find the…” she trails off, glancing at him questioningly.

“Kyber crystals,” he fills in with a quirk of his lips.

Leia steps away from him, letting his hand fall back to his side where it clenches restlessly around nothing but air. She waves her own hand dismissively. “Right, whatever. How long?” she repeats.

He shrugs, wishing he could give her this, but: “I’m… not sure. Father” —she flinches at the word, and Luke’s heart contracts painfully, but he continues— “mentioned Illum, but he said it was unlikely. The Empire’s all but destroyed it.” Leia opens her mouth to snap, her anger and grief echoing in waves over their bond, and Luke knows what she’s going to say— _You mean_ he _destroyed it._ And she wouldn’t be wrong, but they’ve had arguments like this too many times, and he’s _tired,_ so he speaks before she can, “I meditated in hyperspace on my way here yesterday, and I think I’m supposed to go to Tatooine.” He ignores her closed-off expression and shrugs, “Maybe Ben’s journals will have some clues. Just let the Force guide you.”

But he can tell she’s not reassured, and he understands. They’ve left Han too long. And their father’s emphasized the need for weapons and urged Luke to focus on training. But Luke also knows that even if his father is trying, it’s been too long since he’s had friends, people to care about. Vader can’t yet understand the pain it causes him and Leia both to leave Han to his fate, even temporarily.

So in that moment, Luke makes a decision. “I’ll already be on Tatooine, so why don’t you meet me there in three days.” She looks away from the chrono above his head at that, eyes wide in question, and he senses the disbelief she lets float across the bond. He smiles, “Regardless of whether you’ve found your crystal. Just meet me there, and we’ll get Han out. Agreed?”

And the relief painted on Leia’s features, the weight he can feel ease in his own chest, is worth any amount of disapproval from their father.

This time it’s Leia that reaches for him, tangling their fingers together for a moment. “Agreed.” Her voice is clear and determined, but her fingers and presence are warm and steadying.

She smiles one more time, just a tug at the corner of her lips, and then she drops his hand, stepping backward and turning to cross the room. 

Luke stares after her for a moment and then pivots to look at the chrono hanging innocently on the wall—steadily, inevitably ticking their time away as he watches. So much to do, but first, Han. They’re coming.

**Author's Note:**

> If you guys liked it leave a comment. They make my day! Seriously I love reading them so please leave me one cause they motivate me to write more! if you guys have ideas for other stories send me an ask on tumblr [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/imadetheline) or just yell about stuff with me. Info about me and all my other tumblrs are [here](https://infoabtmaddie.carrd.co/#)


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